My Fiction

DODDERING

LITERARY FICTION, 66,000 words

SYNOPSIS:

Moira is a disaffected nursing assistant who spends her days tending to the needs of the elderly, but she hasn’t been taking care of herself for over a decade. Her stasis changes when she wants to win the affections of a magnetic new coworker, Olivia. Olivia proposes a solution to the paltry wages at the nursing home: they siphon drugs and sell them off. Caught up in their intensifying relationship, Moira goes along with Olivia’s plan.

Thrust into juggling her nursing home duties alongside her new “second job,” Moira faces obtrusive managers, meddling coworkers, and one long-term resident she can’t stop thinking about. She discovers that shaking things up once in a while actually feels good, blurring the boundaries between salvation and undoing. But as Moira’s caution devolves, she may not be able to hide her indiscretions for long.

As she reckons with her parents’ fatal car accident, her lost religion, and the true, chaotic cost of connection, Moira will have to make a choice: to continue with Olivia’s plan for the future or come up with her own. The outcome will determine whether she can finally let the past go and invest in her own life.